Tel Aviv, Israel – The international spokesman for the Israeli army, Nadav Shoshani, announced that the air military operations are only a few days away from completing the destruction of all targets classified as “top priority” inside Iranian territory.
Bombing strategy and target classification
According to a CNN report, Shoshani explained that Israel’s target bank is divided into strategic groups, including ballistic missile launch sites, weapons production facilities, command and control centers, and the nuclear program.
He noted that each group is subject to a three-tiered classification (primary, important, and secondary). He also emphasized that the current focus is on completing the mission related to the highest-priority “production group” within a short timeframe. However, he added that operations are being conducted while taking into account changing operational circumstances.
In a related development, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed that sensitive facilities were bombed over the weekend. These attacks included two steel plants (one of which handles radioactive materials) and the heavy water facility in Arak, a key plutonium production site. Shoshani justified the renewed targeting of the Arak facility by citing observed Iranian attempts to rebuild it after a previous strike last June.
A heavy human toll and conflicting statistics
On the humanitarian front, international reports paint a grim picture of the scale of the losses. Reuters and the human rights organization HRANA have documented the deaths of 3,461 people in Iran so far, including 1,551 civilians (at least 236 of whom were children).
For its part, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies announced that its confirmed death toll had reached 1,900. In addition, some 20,000 others were injured, and the Federation warned that hundreds of medical facilities and schools had been damaged by the combined strikes.
Losses on other fronts
Meanwhile, coinciding with the barrage of Iranian retaliatory missiles, the Israeli emergency services have reported 19 civilian deaths so far. This is in addition to four soldiers killed in clashes in southern Lebanon. On the American side, 13 soldiers have died in the Gulf states. Furthermore, 12 others were wounded on Saturday in an Iranian attack targeting an airbase in Saudi Arabia, two of whom are in critical condition.
These developments are unfolding amidst strict censorship imposed by Tehran on the flow of information. Consequently, international organizations are relying heavily on field reports and medical sources to document the scale of the disaster engulfing the region.
